Archive for June 27th, 2007

Chicago was a whirlwind, we got there midpoint in the Friday night concert and jammed right there at the cafe’ after the concert. We ended up with a small circile of folks… Gerald Ross from Ann Arbor, Fred Fallin of Chicago (photo below left, of Fred during his Saturday-afternoon show), Neal (drat, his last name escapes me), plus Brian and myself and I think at least one more person.

Fred loves much of the music we also play… it was funny, he sort of led the song-choosing that night but he picked 3 songs from the playlist we had put together for our Saturday show. Even though we once played a two-person jam session for three hours (at Wheatland festival) without repeating a single song. Great fun, indeed.

We heard that some folks might be jamming in Oak Park after the cafe’ closed up. We decided that we had better rest ourselves and our voices, and go back to the hotel room and just sleep. I’m glad we listened to our inner adults, it made the next day work out much better.

Saturday was exciting. They started with a traditional Hawaiian hula, just a gourd and voice(s) for rhythm/music, and traditional dress including leaves on the head and wrists. It was just plain incredible. I’ve seen this type of dance before but never performed as beautifully as by these dancers.

Brian got a good breakfast from the cafe (I brought food I knew would agree with me) and we listened to Steven and buddies while getting ready. We changed into our stage gear (a tux or silk dress is not a day-long jam session costume, but it’s perfect for our act while on stage). We got up there and finished the sound check in no time so they let us start playing early. We got to play about 2-3 more numbers than we’d planned, which was great. It’s handy that our songs almost all weigh in at under 3 minutes!

We missed the opening act for open mic at the outdoor tent, our friends the Uke Bros from Lansing. We did get to hear them very late in the day, though, and this picture at right is of Randy and Rod smiling at something off stage, I think right after they had finished playing one song.

After us was a great lineup of folks. One group included commenter Jima (front row far left), a group of uke players taught by the same teacher as the hula dancers. Her name is Lanialoha (hidden behind hula dancers in first photo, and right front in group uke shot below left) and I can not say enough good about her The dancers were so beautiful I literally broke down and cried. She has a big heart and it is reflected through the work of her students. Meeting her and those who study with/love her, was the best thing all weekend.

I have at least three more photos to share with you. Because I’m still moving myself to the new laptop, I’m slow with positively everything else. If you sent me email, I probably got it and have not had time to write back yet. Today I even remembered to move over my fonts (very important when you do publicity for three businesses, you can not afford to lose a signature font as I discovered many years ago when my laptop was stolen).

I can live with the new palm device setup though it’s not ideal. I can live with fussing with printing (it will work if I open a file on the other laptop and print through the network, OR if I plug the printer into this new machine directly without a network, but if I use new computer through network I either get black and white or it prints an inch too low and to the right). As long as I know what fussing to do before I print things like ***patterns***, then i can deal with it.

So that is to say that I will post at least three more photos, but I can not get that done before I have to leave for dance rehearsal. Life is full of compromises, you know? At least we are fully into summer right now, and for me this is a wonderful thing. Summer loves me and I love it. It’s convenient we had rain to bring the temps down before rehearsal, though…

Catch you later with a few more photos… and then a travelogue of a one-day Chicago food/sightseeing adventure.

Who is LynnH?

LynnH is Lynn DT Hershberger of Lansing, Michigan, USA. She considers her artistic medium to be color, whether it
be knitting, printmaking, polymer clay or embellishing with paints. She also creates recipes with allergy-friendly,
gluten-free, and vegan-friendly ingredients.